Ganges River

The Ganges (, also Ganga , Devanāgarī: , in most Indian languages, ) is a major river in the Indian subcontinent flowing east through the eponymous plains of northern India into Bangladesh. The 2,510 km (1,557 mi) long river begins at the  Gangotri Glacier in the Indian state of Uttarakhand in the central Himalayas and drains into the Bay of Bengal through its vast delta in the Sunderbans. It is held sacred by Hindus and is worshipped in its personified form as the goddess Ganga.
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Noun
1. an Asian river; rises in the Himalayas and flows east into the Bay of Bengal; a sacred river of the Hindus
(synonym) Ganges
(hypernym) river
(part-holonym) India, Republic of India, Bharat

Ganga (Sanskrit) The Ganges, the sacred river of India. The Puranas and old tales of India represent the goddess Ganga transforming herself into a river and then flowing from the toe of Vishnu. She is said to have been brought from heaven by the prayers of Bhagiratha to purify the ashes of the 60,000 sons of King Sagara who had been consumed by the angry glance of the sage Kapila.
The Ganges, like many other ancient, highly revered streams, was an emblem of the flowing from spirit to matter, or from celestial realms to material, of occult forces including streams of wisdom and power flowing from heaven to earth or from gods to mankind, an idea which once understood kept perennially before people's minds the reality of the spiritual worlds and their intimate interconnection with the realms of physical space and time.
As the true interpretation of this old tale gradually was lost, there arose the religious belief that the actual waters of the Ganges were sin-cleansing, reminiscent of the supposed sin-cleansing power of the river Jordan in Christian and even in certain Jewish thought.